Idiocracy
I expected to compose a screed against 20th Century Fox for declining to give this movie a theatrical release, but after seeing Mike Judge’s latest effort, I can understand why the studio was nonplussed. “Idiocracy” is unquestionably better than a lot of alleged comedies that make it to theaters — and it has a smart, satirical premise — but it’s half-baked. It’s hardly a feature film — sans credits, it’s less than 80 minutes long! I don’t like bloated comedies either, but when you dip under 80 minutes you’re getting into “Dangerous Cousins” territory (if you watched “Arrested Development” you’ll get this reference).
“Idiocracy” is unquestionably the weakest link in Judge’s body of work. (He created “Beavis and Butt-Head” and “King of the Hill” and wrote and directed “Office Space.”) Like the best comic writers, he combines an incisive mind with a well-honed taste for lowbrow humor. And the premise of “Idiocracy” sounds like an inspired outlet for his talents: An average guy is frozen in 2005 and wakes up 500 years later to discover a culture so dumbed-down that he’s easily the smartest person alive.
“Idiocracy” succumbs, though, to a problem that many high-concept comedies grapple with: It’s difficult to craft funny gags when you’re working so hard to establish the milieu and explain the premise. (The movie relies heavily on voice-over narration.) Many of the best comedies ever made operate in a deadpan-realistic style; the familiar surroundings allow the absurd behavior to stand out. But when everything in the frame screams “zany,” it’s hard to know where to look. Some of the details in the margins of “Idiocracy” — misspelled signs and idiotic advertisements — are a lot funnier than anything the actors say or do. No wonder — they rarely have the freedom to improvise because they’re being held hostage by the concept. If you’re making a comedy and the production designer is working as hard as he did in “Idiocracy,” you might want to ask if you’ve got your priorities in order.
At the same time, I suspect Judge didn’t have the budget to fully realize his vision of the dunderheaded future — perhaps that’s the reason for the too-tight running time. “Idiocracy” envisions society on the brink of collapse, and Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson) — who was selected by the Army to be frozen precisely because he’s unremarkable — ends up trying to help the pro wrestler/porn star U.S. president (Terry Alan Crews) rescue the nation from ruin. But the only way Judge can think to illustrate Joe’s enormous task is to show a field of crops that aren’t growing. There are some elaborate digital-effects sequences, but I get the feeling that, on the whole, “Idiocracy” was done on the cheap. Not that a bigger budget would have made it funnier — comedies often reach a point of diminishing returns when the filmmakers spend gobs of money — but I wonder if Judge feels his full vision reached the screen.
And it is an arresting vision. Judge takes the familiar smart-person’s lament that only cretins are reproducing to a horrifying extreme. He tracks the coarsening of our culture through the evolving name of the burger franchise Fuddrucker’s — over the centuries, the name gets more and more obscene, and when Joe wakes up, it’s known as Buttfuckers. “Idiocracy” is the work of an angry man, upset about the encroachment of corporate sponsorship into every aspect of our lives, the corruptibility of government, the mangling of the English language (everyone thinks Joe “talks faggy” because he speaks in complete, intelligible sentences), the ubiquity of sex (in the future, Starbucks sells handjobs with its lattes) and the dumbing-down of entertainment (the No. 1 movie in America is called “Ass,” and the title is fully accurate). All this might sound funnier than it actually appears on screen, again because Judge devotes so much attention to his satirical diatribes that the story never takes shape. Maya Rudolph, as the prostitute frozen alongside Joe, is largely wasted, although she’s cute in a running gag where she can’t bring herself to tell Joe she’s a hooker when it should be plainly obvious to him. Rudolph has never looked lovelier, but Judge could have done more with a performer whose inspired zaniness shines through even in the lamest “Saturday Night Live” bits.
I really wanted to like “Idiocracy,” and at times I did. But it’s loud and busy in all the wrong places and weirdly undercooked in the right ones.